Greyhound has role in new migration

DALLAS — By the time it pulled into Dallas, the bus from Arizona was two hours and 47 minutes late. It had left Phoenix overbooked, turned away passengers with tickets in Tucson, rolled through El Paso at 2 a.m. and finally disgorged its human cargo — a busload of exhausted migrants, mostly from Central America — shortly before dusk the next day.

A sign in the Greyhound bus terminal listed the ongoing routes that were already facing delayed departures: San Antonio, Los Angeles, Houston, Detroit, Atlanta, Brownsville. All of them would be late; most of them were full. Those who had missed their connections would need to wait in line, an agent announced, as the disembarking passengers — many of them with no food, no money and no possessions beyond what was in their slim backpacks — listened in stunned silence.

“My God, we are going to have to spend two nights here,” Zuleima Lopez, recently arrived from Guatemala with her husband and three children, murmured as she surveyed the ragged tableau inside the terminal. Refuse had long before overfilled the available trash bins, and a rank odor wafted out from the restrooms. Mothers, fathers and children huddled together on scraps of cardboard, atop tattered

blankets and splayed-out jackets. Feverish babies with runny noses fussed in their mothers’ arms.

At one end of the station, several passengers jostled for $7.50 meal vouchers — 19 cents less than the cheapest cheeseburger combo — until, halfway through the line, the agent announced there were no more vouchers.

A Greyhound road trip across the country has long been a hallmark of the American experience, a “leave the driving to us” way for those who couldn’t afford airfare or a car to come home from college, start new jobs, get to the coast, leave problematic situations behind.

But along the border and deep into parts of the nation’s interior, the Greyhound buses plying the interstate highway system have become an essential element in an extraordinary new migration.

Entering the country at a rate of more than 5,000 each day, new arrivals from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador are departing border towns by the busload. While President Donald Trump has made a point of threatening to send migrants from the border to inland sanctuary cities that oppose his immigration policies, it is an empty threat: Migrants are already traveling by the thousands every day to cities across the country.

Cashing in on crisis

After an initial 72 hours or so at Customs and Border Protection processing centers along the border, the vast majority of those entering the country now are released to nonprofit respite centers, where they are fed and clothed. From there, they are booked on Greyhound buses to destinations where they may have friends, family or the hope of a job. They pay top dollar, often $250 to $300 each, usually advanced by family members in the United States.

Long lines and bedraggled migrant travelers have become fixtures at bus stations across the Southwest — and a source of substantial new revenue for Greyhound, a company that had been struggling for footing in an era of cheap airfares and stiff competition on shorter-haul routes from companies like Megabus.

Currently owned by the British transport conglomerate FirstGroup, Greyhound filed for bankruptcy twice in the 1990s. More recently, the company introduced Bolt Bus express service, Wi-Fi access and other innovations, but falling fuel prices and the convenience of car and air travel continued to limit its ability to attract upscale customers.

Then came the crisis on the southwest border.

While Greyhound isn’t capturing the entire market of migrants traveling from the border, the company’s extensive routes have enabled it to lock in most of them. “There is no doubt that the revenue from this immigrant influx is in the millions and helps Greyhound,” said Joe Schwieterman, an intercity bus expert at DePaul University.

Rob Friedman, Greyhound’s chief commercial officer, acknowledged in an interview that sales in migrant markets in Texas and Arizona have grown considerably in the past year. He said that the company has boosted capacity in McAllen and El Paso, the two Texas cities that are the border’s busiest entry points, while striving to “meet demand with our available resources of buses and drivers.”

In the Southwest alone, a part of the country that once accounted for 8% of the company’s revenue now brings in 11%, he said.

‘Now they’re heading east’

The Greyhound station in Dallas, the company’s headquarters, has been transformed by default into a temporary migrant shelter. A similar scene has been playing out in cities across the Southwest. In McAllen, hundreds of migrants pack the station daily, lining up to board buses. In El Paso, hundreds at once have shown up at the terminal without warning, trying to find their way. In Phoenix, a swell in drop-offs by immigration authorities led Greyhound to restrict station access to those holding tickets, exposing families left outside to the rain.

Some such as Zuleima Lopez and her family had ridden a bus much of the way from Guatemala through Mexico. Their journey would continue through Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Arkansas and Tennessee, all on a packed bus.

If they could get to Nashville, her brother lived not far, and had promised to help them find work — if the immigration court allowed them work permits. They could live with him until they got on their feet. The children could go to an American school, start learning English.

But first, they would have to get out of Dallas.

“Sometimes, it’s almost like we’re the foreigners,” said Don Shockley, 77, a retired truck driver with 4 million miles under his belt. “I think we got to build a wall. It won’t keep them all out but it’ll keep some out.”

“Used to be they came to California and Texas. Now they are heading east,” Shockley added.